Category: Music

Star-making machinery

Doc Searls really nails what’s wrong with the entertainment industry, aka “the star-making machinery,” and why it’s pulling every string it can to ensure that the web doesn’t walk on its turf, even if it means killing the web:

The entertainment industry is fundamentally about making stars. It isn’t just about entertaining people, except as an effect of the star system, which serves to entertain mass quantities of people. It’s about packaging celebrity as a product, causing appetites for it, and delivering mass quantities of stuff made appealing by it, for as long as any variety of it might last. And doing it over and over and over again.

Nothing wrong with that, by the way. Just something wrong with nothing but that.

Which is why the CARP/LOC ruling is so awful and wrong. It’s about maintaining the incumbent star-making machinery that starts with the recording industry and works its way through commercial broadcasting, mass market advertising, arena performance events and cross-promotion through the whole mess of it.

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Peaceful morning with Elvis

It’s a beautiful morning here in Boston. I’m lingering over the New York Times and other items in my Radio aggregator, drinking tea, making an omelet, listening to The Juliet Letters.

True confession: I loved this album when it came out. I couldn’t stop playing it. Today I know there’s something a little too arch about the performance, a little too forced in the compromise between pop songwriting and string quartet writing. But still I love the album: the somber wordless opening “Deliver Us,” the melancholic “For Other Eyes,” the gleefully wicked “I Almost Had a Weakness,” the wistful “Who Do You Think You Are?” Perfect early morning reflection music.
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Clear Channel losing $ hand over tight fist

Washington Post: Mega Hurts: Clear Channel’s Big Radio Ways Are Getting a Lot of Static These Days (via Slashdot). Apparently Clear Channel’s relentless homogenization of US radio is causing some other people than me to turn off that station. Or maybe it’s just the hideous advertising slump.

In some cities, the company’s radio stations attract as much as half the audience and advertising dollars… If a pending deal to buy a competitor in Charlottesville is approved, Clear Channel would control more than 90 percent of that city’s radio market, according to analyst Mark Fratrik of BIAfn Inc.

But if Clear Channel is a colossus, it’s a colossus under the gun.

The company lost money every quarter last year, piling up an annual loss of $1.1 billion. Clear Channel also is shouldering $8 billion in debt — the legacy of its deal-a-minute expansion spree. With a long advertising slump afoot, the company’s stock is selling at about half its peak price of two years ago.

A retraction

While I’m on the subject, I have to apologize for saying that And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead’s “Relative Ways” “sounds a whole lot like really good Sonic Youth.” That’s not nearly specific enough. The intro and 4/4 / 3/4 guitar hook sounds pretty specifically exactly like the 5/4 middle section of “Wildflower Soul,” while the verse melody is highly derivative of “Teen Age Riot” (from Daydream Nation). Just wanted to clear that up.

Now playing

Currently playing song: “Relative Ways” by And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead on Source Tags and Codes. Sadly, while this song sounds a whole lot like really good Sonic Youth a la A Million Leaves or Washing Machine, the rest of the album sounds a whole lot like… a lot of other bands. I might think better of it after another listen.

Rocking for Mother Earth

Just got back from the 2002 Earth Fest at the Hatch Shell in Boston. Johnny A, Garbage, Lisa Loeb, Midnight Oil, and Bonnie Raitt. I’m a bit sunburned and dehydrated, but happy.

Garbage played a short set, maybe seven songs, but rocked pretty well. Lisa Loeb seemed to play on forever. I’m sort of a fan, but I had to agree when my friend Carie said to me, “She tries to sound really happy, but she’s got all these Alanis Morrisette lyrics.” “Yeah,” I said, “She’s like what if Alanis went to Mt. Holyoke.”

Midnight Oil rocked my world. I had forgotten that there was a period of time, starting around 1987 or 1988, when I listened to this band quite a lot. The CDs are long gone but the band is still going strong. One of our friends, a banker-to-be from Europe, was enjoying the show. He confessed, “I used to be really into this band, but then I used to be a Communist too.”

I was too tired to take in much Bonnie Raitt; when I found myself almost falling asleep I decided it was time to head back. Good show, though, and well worth the money I didn’t pay for it (yeah, it was a free show!).

Listening day

Happiness is a new Elvis Costello record and finally having Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in my hands. EC: return to form. So far, with the exception of the song with samples, sounds a lot like “Brutal Youth.” Wilco: it’s a miracle the album came out at all, what with all the mess around its release. More later. Must listen, must listen.

Can’t hear the orchestra. You’re talking too loud

New York Times: Lamenting the Fade-Out of Classical Radio. Apparently another classical station is undergoing a format change to embrace more talk. Michael Kimmelman writes:

The big problem is that music has been progressively dumbed down over the years, and not just at WNYC. Talk about music has replaced music itself, or the music is guitar sonatas and easy-listening favorites, background noise that drives away serious devotees. The public can judge quality. If you cheapen a product enough, eventually no one will want it. It is no surprise people have stopped tuning in.

As someone who’s often felt the urge to call up stations in Boston and Washington and yell at them to find something in a minor key, or with a chorus, or written before 1780 or after 1880, I’ll confirm Kimmelman’s observations. But this isn’t the whole story. The dismemberment of “Performance Today”, one of the refuges of unique, challenging, and interesting classical music performance, shows that classical music has someone actively gunning for it. [Disclaimer: I’ve been on “Performance Today” as part of the Virginia Glee Club.]

I’ll also note that the disappearance of jazz stations should have served as a warning. But we were all tuned in to Rush, Howard, and even “All Things Considered” to notice.
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